This (along with several other contenders) could serve as a baseline against which all women’s prison movies are measured. It’s far from great, and far from terrible. It’s camp, but not too camp. Well, it’s over-the-top camp at times. It has a brave heroine, a particularly nasty villain, plenty of true-to-life prisoners who have no wish to fly above the radar, some drama… and, presumably because it’s made-for-TV and it’s 1972, a surfeit of beautiful women but no shower scenes, lesbian scenes, or lascivious male officers. What’s more, it stars two prison movie greats: Ida Lupino (Women’s Prison, 1955) and Barbara Luna (The Concrete Jungle, 1982). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on February 4th, 2014 at 8:18 pm. Updated on February 8th, 2014 at 7:45 pm.
A 1967 poll found that 71% of Japanese opposed the abolition of the death penalty. To those in that handsome majority, director Nagisa Oshima asks: “Have you ever seen inside an execution chamber? Have you ever seen an execution?” And one steels oneself for an uncomfortable two hours of docudrama polemic or a voyage through the mechanics of the gallows. That’s not quite what you get. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on February 3rd, 2014 at 8:45 pm. Updated on February 3rd, 2014 at 8:45 pm.
There are many men of my generation who will remember Susan Dey as the only reason for watching The Partridge Family. My memory of Laurie Partridge has dulled considerably, but it could well be her who has strayed into this TV movie, and into this TV prison, by mistake.
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Posted on January 27th, 2014 at 8:39 am. Updated on January 27th, 2014 at 8:45 am.
It’s Uruguay, 1980. In Montevideo’s Libertad (‘Freedom’) Prison (named with no hint of irony, it seems), communist-red clothing is banned on visitors and children’s pictures of birds are not allowed, either. Birds, it would appear, symbolise flight and choice and freedom, and the military regime is not well disposed to such thinking. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on January 21st, 2014 at 8:59 pm. Updated on January 21st, 2014 at 8:59 pm.
Forget the title; this is not your ordinary Women in Prison exploitation movie. Well, yes, there is some adolescent preoccupation with sex (principally as a spectator sport), and a collection of minor players whose sole function is to wear little underwear and have their prison uniforms ripped in fights, but it is more comic ghost story than soft-porn. And it’s the ghosts that make it a little unusual. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on January 14th, 2014 at 9:02 pm. Updated on February 8th, 2014 at 7:52 pm.
Ah, the thirties! There’s always been a bit of a fascination with prison workers falling in love with prisoners, but prison-hospital romance seemed to be of particular interest in the late 30s. Take, for example, Prison Nurse (1937), featuring a relationship between a nurse and a doctor-prisoner, Prison Farm (1938) with a doctor and a female prisoner, and Buried Alive (1939) with another nurse and a male prisoner. And then this one. But the interest doesn’t seem to be due to just the scandal or titillation of illicit relationships, but from a more noble notion that the stigma attached to those who are (or have been) prisoners, should be removed – that ex-prisoners should not be excluded from mainstream society. And who better to socialise and legitimise such a notion than a handsome doctor or a pretty nurse? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on January 13th, 2014 at 9:38 pm. Updated on January 13th, 2014 at 9:38 pm.
7 Stones is only 46 minutes long. It seems longer. It is a fairly opaque 46 minutes. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on January 8th, 2014 at 9:50 pm. Updated on January 8th, 2014 at 9:50 pm.
Based on a true story, this is, but it bears a remarkable similarity to another based-on-a-true-story film, Hell in Tangier (2006). Except on this occasion, it is an ill, innocent American woman being held in an Ecuadorian prison, rather than an ill, innocent Belgian man being held in a Moroccan prison. There is, it seems, more than one innocent person held in a nasty third-world prison with a story to tell. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on January 1st, 2014 at 12:49 pm. Updated on September 19th, 2014 at 9:18 pm.
This little known film noir is a prison movie in the classic mould, and features one of the coldest, most heartless prison bad guys going around. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on January 1st, 2014 at 9:54 am. Updated on January 1st, 2014 at 9:55 am.
I think I made a mistake in reading Roger Ebert’s review of this film (which is also known as ‘Snake Canyon Prison‘), before I watched it. As a result I was expecting something truly execrable – but it turned out to be merely unfunny, in the manner of most prison comedies. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on December 28th, 2013 at 9:33 pm. Updated on December 28th, 2013 at 9:33 pm.